AfriCat Adventures (also known as Easter weekend with Noah)

“Easter weekend is a huge deal for Namibia,” someone told me two weeks ago.

I unwittingly assumed this meant “most people in Namibia are religious and therefore we care a lot about Easter as a religious holiday.” Turns out, I’m pretty sure he meant “Easter means a long weekend and Namibians love holidays when they can go visit their family and friends!”

 Well, far be it from me to argue with Namibian standards! Noah met the manager of the NGO AfriCat while working at Gobabeb, and somehow they managed for us to come visit for free this weekend!

AfriCat is a really interesting place when you look at it. It’s a huge piece of property which houses 2 nature reserves, some wild animals kept in captivity (they are rescued and unable to fend for themselves in the wild), a lodge, and an education centre.

The lodge is the only profitable part of the whole place – AfriCat itself is the reserve and care for dozens of (formerly) wild cats. Cheetahs, leopards, lions, hyenas, caracals and some other things like wild dogs. Although the reserve is fenced in, it’s a sustainable ecosystem of predators and prey, bush and savannah, etc. It’s really incredible to see these animals being cared for in a place like Namibia, where so many things/people are not environmentally conscious and where most people are farmers and hate predators like these! It’s such a successful business/NGO and a beautiful place. (Not to mention the fact that it’s green and rainy, two characteristics I haven’t seen in a LONG time…)

Some of the cheetahs AfriCat is famous for

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to share with all of you the cool pictures of animals we saw =) More updates coming soon, it’s been a hectic week!

Why yes, that is a donkey head they are feeding the cheetahs

Caracal got angry over his food

Our warthog friend who lived right next door to our temt (in the lean-to shack thing that was meant as an observation place for people to watch the birds from)

leopard!

chameleon